Zero
by fluffily
Summary: Izaya's never thought of himself as a lonely person. (Izaya birthday fic - May 4th - no pairings)


**Enjoy a bit of angsty tragedy to go with the many fluffy fics written for Izaya's birthday! (Dear lord how did this happen. OTL) This has also been posted to my AO3 account.**

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Izaya's never thought of himself as a lonely person. He has all of humanity at his fingertips, after all – just a click away, a few phone calls visits-on-a-whim tell them what he wants them to know and not what they need and he can see them do so much to entertain him. They'll fight to live, to kill, to obtain money power love self-actualization.

They should reciprocate his deep enthusiasm, he thinks, but he's been assured by many humans and even by a few monsters – _they hate you, you know, they'll never love you, who the hell would ever _– that it's quite simply too much to ask for.

Okay, and of course he can't expect anyone to fall in with his wants that quickly. He gets that, sure, so perhaps in the meantime a bit of simple interest wouldn't be out of the question – because, really, today is just too boring. Being forgotten is just too boring.

Izaya isn't a child. Birthdays are not a huge deal – just a milestone, a placeholder a marker of the passage of time – and it's fascinating, the human need to recognize some significance in anything and everything that serves as a reminder of a person's ongoing existence.

That's really it, though; Izaya _exists_. It's the most important thing, existing, because without it nothing is possible. Without it, there is no meaning no memory no reason no thought and no humanity. Like being erased, betrayed by all that you are and all that you've done. It's not death itself, but Izaya sometimes wonders if what comes after it is – _is it Valhalla, the Christian heaven, even hell or is it nothingness, the thing wished for by hopeless humans suicide it would have been better if I'd never existed _– and it terrifies him.

Or, he thinks – and his pale fingers curl into a fist amidst bone-white blankets – maybe death and nonexistence really _are_ the same thing. Humans constantly equate them, but that approach is sickeningly pessimistic – still he knows that those who won't forget him would love to and he knows that operating from the shadows means being unknown even by some of those whose lives he directly affects.

He knows that the marks he leaves will one day be erased washed away covered up – the uprooted vending machines, bullet wounds, tears shed and unshed indentations in shallow hospital beds the words the thoughts the memories the rumors and the legend.

Put it together, a puzzle with two complex pieces and he turns it over in his mind like a new toy – no afterlife, just nothingness, and eventually no one in Ikebukuro will know who he is or was. The won't know _that_ he was.

"Will you remind them," he whispers, "Shizu-chan?"

The blonde grins murderous rage sparking in his eyes before Izaya. _Like hell, flea, _he growls, and the informant lets out a shuddery sigh. Of course not, of course…

Shinra? Namie-san? Mikado-kun?

And he sees them turn away slowly heads bowed eyes devoid of pity or amusement or anything that would have made it _okay_.

"Just one," he pleads with no one, with the blank ceiling above him and the tubes stemming from his arms his chest everything like a macabre octopus, a thing half-gone already and no one there to know but him and the one in the mirror on the other side of the room.

"Just one," he rasps. "One."

But there _is _just one, and he's not lonely he's alone he's fine but he wants to keep existing, he needs to be remembered. He needs company to survive somewhere that isn't here, somewhere light and alive and forever.

It's his birthday, soft spring and a breeze he can't feel flowers he can't smell the sting of disinfectant and the iron of blood.

He's dying, his existence maybe coming to a permanent end and maybe not, but it's not enough this isn't enough he'll never be more than this more than broken and abandoned.

"What," he sobs, and he hears a steady beeping like the sound of hollowness crying and calling –

"What was it all for?"


End file.
